Europe wasn't built around cars, car infrastructure or car manufacturing. Consequently they are also not subsidized as much, this is reflected in the price of fuel and the sticker price of the vehicles themselves.
There are other side effects: better public transport (though there is great variation and some of the old advantages are being rolled back), better bike infrastructure (again, not everywhere) and more local shopping rather than just malls.
A new Toyota Corolla in the Netherlands costs around €25k, of which around 11k are taxes (5k sales tax plus 6k vehicle tax). Gas price at the pump are €1.67/L (= €6.32/gallon), of which almost half are (sales+excise) taxes.
I'm really not sure. There's VAT which is around 20%ish, maybe that's lower in the US? And then registration + carbon taxes cost on top, but I didn't even include that in the price
It's also just that middle-class and higher incomes are much lower here than in the US + property is on average much more expensive. so people don't have as much disposable income to burn on cars
Many countries also have specific taxes based on engine size and emissions. For example, for 2020 Ford Explorer, a relatively popular SUV in the US (often a police car), you’d pay something like 12k EUR of extra pollution tax in France at purchase.
There is no VAT in the U.S. Each state (except for a few) has a sales tax that may or may not apply to vehicles, but if it does the rate is usually 5-8% not 20%. And since it’s variable it’s tacked on at the point of sale not embedded into the “retail price” of the car.
The registration fees in France can go from a couple of hundred to tens of thousands of euros, to be paid every time the car changes owner... on top of the pollution tax, paid only the first time
It's usually not so much the expense of the car as the cost of operating them. Consider how expensive it is to own a car in NYC, well it's the same in all European cities, even those of much smaller size.
NYC parking prices, California gas prices (and possibly California registration costs depending on country), European tax rates, and "safety" inspection programs (that mostly just increase the cost of operating old, cheap cars), combine to provide a hefty financial incentive for people in Western Europe to take the bus/train.
Hopefully they are too socially responsible to be “thrilled” with that.
American gas prices and vehicle fees are scandalously low, too low to pay for upkeep of car infrastructure, let alone to pay for the externalities of driving and of burning fossil fuels.
Even more scandalously low are public transit prices, which are too low to even cover half the cost of operating it, much less to cover the infrastructure upkeep.
